Short of winning the lottery, it would be impossible to end this year long adventure with a bang. A champagne Sunday Lunch in a nice hotel in Singapore or Hong Kong would have been a pretty good alternative and that’s one for the ‘Lessons Learned’ for next time!

Bali is a bit of a halfway house between a trip abroad and being in Australia. It is definitely abroad, but there are a fuck load of Aussies here. It is to Australians what certain parts of Spain are to Brits; not too far (in Aussie terms, that’s a 6.5 hour flight) good weather when Australia is in winter and it is relatively cheap. On the upside lots of Aussies means pretty good coffee. On the downside, men in singlets, or topless, talking about sport are everywhere. I know very little about sport, certainly not enough to credibly chat about it, and my moobs mean that I look faintly ridiculous without the majority of me covered. I love Australia, but still can’t get my head around how many dressed up women put up with men who believe dressing up for an evening out is putting on their best tee shirt. Bah. Standards.

This is the third time I’ve been to Bali. The first time was an exploring holiday about 20 years ago and the next was a Christmas in a vila with a pool with Katie and Al and very little activity other than eating and drinking. This couple of days was pretty much just a stopover to capture two more days of warmth.

We stayed in a place we had booked because it was near the airport and the ferry to Gili Air on our way in, they were happy to hang on to a bag when we went to the Island and we thought we would only be there for one night on the way out. It was fine, but lacked a pool so we had to find a place where we could crash there pool. One was at the Sakala Beach club which featured a nice pool, hogsnarlingly experience cocktails, middle classed children left to run riot and ambient house with the bass cranked up. Not really for the FTs. Day 2 was at the Byrdhouse Beach Club where for a min spend of about AU$30 each on food and booze you could use there facilities. It had good scoff, ok cocktails so the spend challenge was child’s play.

It was odd to pack up our bags for the last time, need to the airport for the last time and OD on free booze and food in an airport for the last time. It is so hard to get our minds around what we have done over the past year and that we would soon be home. It is pretty much impossible to summarise what we’ve learned and the experiences we have been fortunate enough to experience, but we really did feel that is was a year to be celebrated rather than the end being something to be sad about.

That said, in my next blog I have tried to summarise the year, rant a little bit and provide some hints, tips and highlights.